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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"We're the Robot Mafia... The '''entire''' Robot Mafia."''
|'''The Donbot''', "surrounded" by his two goons, ''[[Futurama]]''}}
Occasionally, the hero(es) might meet a group of characters who make up a secret organization that either menace or help him/her/them. They are shadowy, and mysterious, known for their [[Quirky Miniboss Squad|unique and]] [[Those Two Guys|quirky members]], and the organization has a [[Informed Ability|reputation for being far reaching and prevalent]]... Except we never see any of that - it's just talk. Whenever these guys show up, it's just the same group of misfits we know and love.
In the rare occasion that there are more of their number in existence, those characters never last. They simply show up and then disappear, with a few cameo appearances in the future, but still not enough for it to break our [[Fridge Logic]].
Often exhibited by a [[Quirky Miniboss Squad]]. Compare with [[Economy Cast]] and [[Suspiciously Small Army]].
{{examples}}
* In the oldest McDonalds commercials from the 70s, the police force of McDonaldland consisted of one guy, Officer Big Mac. Of course, the Hamburglar and Captain Crook were the only criminals he had to watch out for, so he was all that was needed.
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
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* The Doma organization in season 4 of ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' apparently consists at the beginning of the season of Dartz, Raphael, Alister, Valon, Grerimo and, at one point, Mai, and no-one else. ''And'' its members lose their souls one at a time over the course of the season.
* Jackal, the [[Card-Carrying Villain|evil organization]] that created the titular anti-hero ''[[Ratman]]'', is this. There are the three Mizushimas (the grandfather and the two sisters), the protagonist, and a scattered number of [[Mooks|Jackies]]. That's it.
* In ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V]]'', both the male and female protagonist go to and represent You Show Duel School, which has one teacher - also the headmaster, and father of said female protagonist - and started the series with six students, later increasing to seven with Sho joining later. While many Duel Schools are rather specialized in clientele (this one focusing on "Dueltainment" styles), this is rather small compared to the others.
* The so-called "Dark Kingdom" in ''[[Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: Crystal]]'' appears to have an entire population of ''five people'', and uses what amounts to purpose-built [[Golem]]s created one at a time to fight its battles.<ref>This is in stark contrast to the Dark Kingdom of the original ''[[Sailor Moon]]'', which was populated by thousands of demonic creatures ruled over by former humans.</ref>
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* [[Depending on the Writer]] (and continuity), [[The Avengers (Comic Book)|The Avengers]].
* The [[Fantastic Four (Comic Book)|Fantastic Four]]. It's all in the name: four. And despite the fact that there have been members other than the original Four over the years, they never last long, and the original roster always returns. Given that they are supposed to be as much a family as they are a team, most writers wouldn't have it any other way.
** The longest lasting expansion was the Fantastic Five in [[Marvel Comics 2]] where it was still a family, just expanded with the wives and children of the originals.
* The Hellfire Club in ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]''. Although presumably they have tons of members and are incredibly pervasive, we really only ever see 4-5 of them.
** They make up for it with a crap load of [[Mooks|nameless henchmen]], many of whom can be found at the ends of Wolverine's claws.
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** Given that he's [[Badass|Steve Rogers]], does he really need an organization?
* The G.I.Joe team once asked for the aide of a man named Spigou of the resistance in communist Borovia. When the mission goes sour, Stalker asks Spigou where the rest of the organization is. Turns out Spigou is the whole thing. {{spoiler|Spigou is then killed.}}
* In DC comics, most Lantern Corps have moderate to large rosters, the most well-known being the Green Lantern Corps who had 7,200 members at peak. Others only have a few named members, but their rosters are assumed to be large. The Orange Lantern Corps is unique, however, in that it only has one member at a time. This is justified, as an Orange Lantern draws power from Greed, and the very nature of this source prevents more than one member from sharing it. Currently, Larfleeze is the Agent Orange.
* The Enclave is a group of [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] scientists dedicated to world domination that consists of only three members. (It originally had four, but Jerome Hamilton was killed in one of their earliest endeavors.) This doesn't mean they aren't a threat, however. Their greatest success (or failure, depending how you look at it) was creating the being who eventually became known as [[Adam Warlock]].
== [[Fan Works]] ==
* Warriors International, commonly just called "The Warriors", is the United Nations' super-powered (para)military force in the home timeline of Douglas Sangnoir, main character of ''[[Drunkard's Walk]]''. Its Alpha team, which normally takes point on strategic international crises involving metahumans, numbers no more than a dozen members. Its three other teams are similarly sized.
== [[Film]] ==
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** And the EU also justifies the formula: when there were more than two Lords, they usually argued, fought, and killed each other due to [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder]].
** Though this only applies for the "Rule of Two", which is only for Darth Bane's Order of the Sith Lords. There are several other Sith orders before and after that, and as mentioned many of it's members bent the rules where they could- Bane only enforced it because the one he belonged to prior to that was comprised of ''hundreds'' of Sith Lords who kept fighting each other more than the fought the Jedi. Older orders have even been intergalactic ''empires'' with ''thousands'' of Sith, though they were much better organized into a strict hierarchy so they didn't collapse so easily. And The One Sith from ''[[Star Wars Legacy]]'' used the "Rule of One", which operated as a cult whereby they had dozens of Sith but the Order was put above the individual (the complete opposite of the previous orders, which stressed selfish personal ambition), therefore they were all "[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|One Sith]]".
== [[Literature]] ==
* Varys of ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' is a highly knowledgeable and untrustworthy "master of whisperers," but these whisperers are nowhere to be seen. Even when questioned about his sources by a direct superior, he gives evasive answers. He almost certainly has an entire army of informers, and it's theorized that the "little birds" always telling him things are mute, literate children creeping in the secret passages of King's Landing.
* Many of the factions in ''[[Illuminatus|The Illuminatus! Trilogy]]'' consists of few (often, [[Arc
* The ''[[Good Omens]]'' witchfinders. They've dwindled down to Witchfinder-Sergeant Shadwell and Witchfinder-Private Newton Pulsifer, but apparently in their heyday there was a whole Witchfinder Army.
** It is implied (If not outright stated) that Shadwell is paid by Crowley and Azriphale, both of whom think that Witchfinders are on their side - Azriphale because he's a witchfinder, and witches are evil, Crowley because of what witchfinders do to witches once they're found. Of course, this later proves to be true of most of the organizations they consider to be on their side.
* ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' makes mention of an order of wizards—of which only five exist, only three even figure into the story at all, and only two of those actually appear in person. There's a reasonable back story that [[All There in the Manual|the main books and movies don't detail at all]]: the wizards are an undercover angelic spec ops force sent by the [[Powers That Be]]. There's not more of them because (a) said Powers [[Rage Against the Heavens|are still miffed]], and (b) the last open attack had mountain ranges (not to mention an entire subcontinent) as collateral damage. Five is not few because Gandalf alone saves two kingdoms, spends the prequel restoring a third and expanding a fourth, and kills his opposing number, doing more for the war effort than an ICBM would. Furthermore, it's implied in Tolkien's notes that the two "missing" wizards had been working offstage to stir up rebellion in Sauron's lands (ie, three-quarters of the world) and prevented him from bringing his full forces to bear.
* The Death Eaters in ''[[Harry Potter]]'' similarly appear as a rather... small organization. Depending on how loose are your criteria for what makes a Death Eater (and whether some of the unnamed Death Eaters are all different from one another), there's only about 3 dozen of them (And that's including the members that died after Voldemort's disappearance AND those who were freshly recruited {{spoiler|after Voldemort's return}}. There never seemed to be more than 20 or so Death Eaters active at any one time.
** Both incarnations of the Order of the Phoenix are also quite small; the original group only had twenty six members (and are said to have been outnumbered by about twenty to one), and about half of them were killed before the end. The second group is not much bigger, but has the advantage of facing a much smaller enemy (the core force of the Death Eaters appears to be about fifty wizards, with the rest consisting of the coerced, the manipulated and the brainwashed, as well as minor hangers-on, who hadn't been replenished when the second Order was formed).
** The exact size of the wizarding population is an example of this trope. But as [http://www.hp-lexicon.org/essays/essay-hogwarts-how-many.html This essay points out], assuming the vast majority of British wizard children go to Hogwarts (something outright said in the book), that means Britain's wizarding population between the age of 11 and 18 is below the 300 mark; maybe even less than 250. Harry's class itself has only 8 confirmed members in it, with a potential of two more. Assuming an even spread between the four houses and all 7 grades, that's 224 students.
* ''[[Night Watch (novel)|Night Watch]]'' and Day Watch both are pretty small organizations. Although there are still enough of them to have offices in most major cities of the world. (even if with only a dozen or so Others per Watch) Justified. A.) there are only about two hundred Others in Moscow, which has one of the "strongest watches" (Paris and Edinburgh Watches being the larger ones) in the world. One cop for every twenty people is actually an unreasonably high ratio. B.) As of Twilight Watch, the Watches can conscript any and all Others in the event of a crisis. The Night Watch trains all Light Others and Light Others unaffiliated with the Watch are even called 'reservists' a few times.
* [[Discworld[[:
** The [[Discworld|other Night Watch]] is also pretty small: when ''[[
** During ''
** It's understandable that Lancre, a kingdom a hundred miles across with two hundred inhabitants, would have a very small military and civil service. In fact
*** It's easier to just list the government jobs Shawn Ogg doesn't perform: king, queen, falconer, and (possibly) palace cook.
** The number of Witches in and around Lancre tends to vary (down to about half-a-dozen at one point, but more numerous now), but is apparently not too many, at least compared to times past.
* The Tribulation Force in the ''[[Left Behind]]'' series, despite its grand name, is just four people. Worse, the world-conquering conspiracy they're rebelling against is also... four people (as the [https://web.archive.org/web/20110907090701/http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2010/07/tf-gang-of-four.html Slacktivist pointed out]).
* From ''[[The Phantom Tollbooth]]'', by Martin Juster: "just as Milo got to his feet the entire police force of Dictionopolis appeared — loudly blowing his whistle."
* [[Artemis Fowl]]'s multimillion dollar criminal organization consists pretty much entirely of himself and his [[Battle Butler]]. Apparently, Artemis occupies himself primarily with grand theft and fraud, having greatly scaled down the family's usual enterprises in order to ensure that he can personally tend to all of his crimes (although he still makes use of his butler's and family's vast network of contacts). He also heavily invests his criminal earnings.
* The ''[[Land of Oz|Oz]]'' series from [[L. Frank Baum]] uses this multiple times in regard to armies. In ''[[The Marvelous Land of Oz]]'', it's revealed that the entire Royal Army of Oz is ''one person'', The Man With the Green Whiskers who first appeared in the original book. By ''Ozma of Oz'', the Tin Woodman has expanded it to... 30 people, 3 of which are only mentioned.
** Another example in the Oz books was the army formed by Queen Ann Soforth of Oogaboo in ''Tick-Toc of Oz'', which had only 17 members (16 of which were officers) which made sense, seeing as Oogaboo itself had a population of only 50.
* [[Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea]]: For a [[NGO Superpower]] capable of helping the Cretan Insurrection, destroy [[The Empire]] ships and with his own [[Con Lang|language]], the Nautilus crew is small: We only see Captain Nemo, his [[Number Two]], and two unfortunate crewmen that die in the novel. And because they have severed all contact with inhabited continents, there will be no more crewmen. Aronnax made a calculation about less than sixty people:
{{quote|''"... Which is tantamount to saying that the air contained in the Nautilus would be exactly enough for 625 men over twenty–four hours."''
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''"But rest assured," I added, "that between passengers, seamen, or officers, we don't total one–tenth of that figure."'' }}
== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
▲== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Blackadder]]'': in ''Blackadder II'', the Queen appears to have only three courtiers; in ''Blackadder the Third'', the Prince Regent has a staff of two; and in ''Blackadder Goes Forth'', Capt. Blackadder has only two men under his command.
* Averted in ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' - the government had the good sense to form a large command of at least 20 teams with a full base when they realized what they were up against. However, it's still kind of played straight, in the "[[Ghost Extras|many more are stated to exist, but we rarely actually see them]]" sense. Although this makes perfect sense when you consider the name of the show - it's meant to focus on the principal team not the command as a whole. Less justified in [[Stargate Atlantis]] whose name does not specify only one team to be the primary focus.
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* In ''[[Game of Thrones]]'', the warlock Pyat Pree is the leader of an coven called "the undying", who are spoken of as a multitude. However, no other warlocks are seen in the House of the Undying, {{spoiler|only Pree's [[Me's a Crowd|many, many clones]]}}.
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
* In ''[[Krazy Kat]]'', the local police force consisted of Offissa Bull Pupp and nobody else; of course, it was hardly a problem, as Ignatz was the only criminal around.
==
* One of the organizations detailed in the rulebook for ''[[D20 Modern]]'' is Yoshitsumo Consulting, which is really just one person, Mr. Yoshitsumo. The entry does say it's odd that one person can be considered an "organization", but Mr. Yoshitsumo has more power and influence in the financial and business world as a consultant than most boards of directors; he has been offered positions as President, CEO, CFO, or Chairman of the Board for most of the Fortune 500 companies, but always turns them down, [[I Work Alone|preferring to remain an independent consultant]] - albeit a ''very'' expensive one.
** [[Big Good|Department-7]] zigzags this; presumably they have quite a few members (other than the PCs themselves, who are likely to be recruited), but the players will usually only see one: a woman who calls herself [[Mysterious Backer|Ms. Fellows]]. Even then, she only speaks to them via a ''projected image'' that appears in a townhouse, so much about Department-7 is left a mystery.
* In ''[[Planescape]]'', the gehreleths are a fiendish race native to Carceri composed of three subclasses, with 3,333 members of each subrace, putting their population just under 10,000 (or exactly 10,000, if their ruler and creator Apomps counts). Occasionally, when Blood War activity in Carceri peaks, this number is doubled. While 20,000 does not seem "small" by mortal standards, the other fiendish races number in the billions, with an army of a million demons or devils considered a small regiment, and the gehreleth's ability to survive with such a comparatively low population is one of their most admirable strengths.
== [[Theatre]] ==
* Watchers of ''[[Les Misérables (theatre)|Les Misérables]]'' could be forgiven for thinking that Inspector Javert is [[The Main Characters Do Everything|the only policeman in all of France]]. We first see him as Valjean's parole officer. When Fantine attacks a sea captain in Montreuil-sur-Mer, Javert is the officer who comes to arrest her (coincidentally running across Valjean in the process). In Paris, when Thenardier tries to mug Valjean, who should show up but Javert (who had already been established as the primary police presence in their neighborhood)? Who tries to infiltrate the barricades? Javert. Who catches Valjean and Marius on their way home? Javert. Aside from the two men who bring Valjean to the Bishop in the first act, no other law enforcement officers show up at all.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* In ''[[Chrono Cross]]'', in mild contrast to [[Radical Dreamers|its base]] (where it was comprised of three people), the band of thieves called the Radical Dreamers is...really just Kid.
* Shadoloo in ''[[Street Fighter]]''. As far as we know, there are only five or six members. Even if you count the [[Brainwashed and Crazy|brainwashed]] [[Amazon Brigade|Doll Squad]], they are still quite small.
* In the anime of the game ''[[Sands of Destruction]]'', the World Destruction Committee consists entirely of two people and a [[Badass Adorable|teddy bear]]; Before the second half of the first episode, it was only one angry human woman. Admittedly, it was a name that her enemies made up to demonize her, but she ran with it because it's intimidating.
* {{spoiler|The Patriots}} of the ''[[Metal Gear]]'' 'verse are
** Plus a few hundred to several thousands of clueless mooks, who have not the slightest idea who they are really working for.
** Actually, they are a {{spoiler|collection of artificial intelligences}} ''set up by'' those fallen heroes and left to run the country. The 4th game reveals the identities of those ex-heroes, and knowing who they are you see, even by the start of ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' (and bear in mind we don't even learn about them until ''MGS'''2'''''), {{spoiler|two of the members were already dead (including the first hostage you fail to rescue), the leader was basically retired all along (and is a vegetable by the time Solid Snake meets him) and the other three had went their own way and turned against the group. Of the two that were dead, one of the latter actually murdered him.}} The "new" {{spoiler|Patriots}} avert this trope since, thanks to their enormous influence, [[I Am the Trope|they equate themselves with the entire country, and are even compared to the prevailing global system]].
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** Even a thousand seems like an awfully small number, considering that they managed to duplicate the most impressive ship in the Alliance fleet, complete with its top-secret stealth technology, and they added on an illegal AI that surely required her own team of specialists to create and test.
*** It's no mystery how they pulled off this feat: Cerberus actually owns the corporations that made the original Normandy. They just commissioned another one with custom additions.
** [[BioWare]] has already [[Lampshaded]] this in preparation for [[Mass Effect 3|the third game]], where Cerberus is an active antagonist. To quote from [https://web.archive.org/web/20111110063810/http://masseffect.bioware.com/me3/n7ops/enemies/cerberus_centurion the official website's page on the Centurion troopers]:
{{quote|''How the Illusive Man recruited and trained such a large number of top-line battlefield commanders is a worrying mystery. Cerberus, once comprised of small, covert cells of agents, is now a burgeoning and unconcealed threat to the galaxy. In the face of the immediate Reaper threat, Alliance Intelligence has scuttled their attempts to infiltrate Cerberus to find out how the Illusive Man managed to quickly swell his organization’s ranks.''}}
** And now that the game is out: {{spoiler|Most of Cerberus' new troops are indoctrinated human refugees, many of them having been taken against their will and implanted with Reaper tech, essentially turning them into lightweight husks [[Faceless Mooks|disguised]] with [[Power Armor]].}}
* The [[Goldfish Poop Gang|Scorpion Army]] from ''[[Secret of Mana]]''.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
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* The Inquisition in ''[[Exterminatus Now]]'' seemed to consist of only the four main characters plus a few recurring characters. However, the truth is that while the Inquisition is much bigger, the reasons main characters are so rarely seen with other Inquisitors is because A: they are blackmailing the chief to have a large, well-furnished building to themselves, and B: everyone else in the Inquisition hates them and hope that they die, so they rarely send backup. They even have a betting pool. However, the reason they don't just murder them themselves is because they are useful due to their absurd amounts of luck.
** Completely subverted in one arc where they take command of a small [[Badass Army]].
* Spec Ops in ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20130529161351/http://turnus.wurmz.net/index.php Turnus]''. The boss's office is a ''broom cupboard''.
* [http://coelasquid.deviantart.com Kelly Turnbull], for her part in a Original Character Tournament called The Coliseum, does a beautiful justification of an Oddly Small Organization [https://web.archive.org/web/20100324025922/http://coelasquid.deviantart.com/art/TC-5-1-The-Final-Countdown-101435241 here] and [https://web.archive.org/web/20130518093355/http://coelasquid.deviantart.com/art/TC-5-7-The-Butcher-is-King-103824967 here]. It perfectly illustrates just how EFFECTIVE a small band with loyal, professional and capable members can be.
* In ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]],'' when Earth is attacked by the [[Space Pirates|Pirates of Ipecac,]] their ship turns out to contain only two pirates.
* In the ''[[Tales Of Gnosis College]]'' a student named Jill Keeney joins an organization she believes is devoted to the overthrow of the hated dictator of Monte Blanco. Once she's joined it, it appears to consist of three people.
== [[Web Original]] ==
* The Order in the Breeniverse shows is supposedly a far reaching worldwide organisation, but the same individual members appear frequently. In ''[[Kate Modern]]'', these typically include Michelle Clore, the Shadow, Kate's Watcher and Rupert van Helden. In ''[[Lonelygirl15]]'', more Order members do appear, but the gang still seem to run into Carl, Lucy and Bree's Watcher surprisingly often.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
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* The Legion Ex Machina in ''[[Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot (animation)|Big Guy and Rusty The Boy Robot]]''. A bit of a subversion, since that not only are they a prominent and credible threat with vast technological resources, {{spoiler|(having an abandoned factory as a base certainly helps)}} but they are [[Nebulous Evil Organization|nebulous]], as well. Despite being made of only 6 members.
* ''[[Regular Show]]'' has seven people [[Lions and Tigers and Humans, Oh My!|(if one can call them people)]] staffing a city park roughly the size of Central Park.
* In [[Netflix]]'s adaptation of ''[[Carmen Sandiego]]'', V.I.L.E. is actually a large criminal organization, while Acme seems to be of similar size, even though few members of the later group are seen other than [[Da Chief]] and a few subordinates. Carmen, however, has a gang consisting of four people: herself, Zach, Ivy, and Player (the last one never seen with her in person). {{spoiler|This increases to five in Season 2 when [[Evil Mentor| Shadow-San]] joins.}} The gang doesn't even have a home base to speak of, always being on the move.
== [[Real Life]] ==
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* The [[CIA]] is an example with regard to their case officers. While they are likely the largest single intelligence agency in the world, they have fewer case officers in the entire agency than the FBI has special agents for New York City alone.
** In this case this is largely because most of the CIA's personnel are analysts as opposed to case officers. The analysts aren't heavily shown in fiction largely because of the generally boring nature of their work.
* The State Police or the Highway Patrol throughout the United States were founded throughout the country from as early as 1903 to the 1930s as a means of enforcing the law on a given state's highways and were normally assigned to specific sections of their state. What made them smaller than your conventional law enforcement agencies is that certain states such as Louisiana and Nevada initially had around 16 troopers (or three, plus the public official who commissioned them, in Nevada's case) appointed to carry out their duties and it was commonplace to assign one or two men to several counties.
* The Gang of Four, the small inner circle of the Chinese Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution, that manipulated the events to their advantage.
* People tend to think of [[Steve Jackson Games]] (the makers of ''[[In Nomine]]'', ''[[Toon (game)|Toon]]'', ''[[GURPS]]'' and ''[[Munchkin (game)|Munchkin]]'') as a moderately powerful force in the gaming industry. Their total staff as of the end of 2013 - the year they shipped the massive re-release of ''OGRE'' - was 43, with most work being contracted with freelancers.
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* [[The Mafia]]. At any given time, there are fewer than 1,000 "made men" in the United States. Most cities that are not [[Big Applesauce|New York City]] or [[The Windy City|Chicago]] will have fewer than 20. Of course, each of them will have a small army of wannabes, thugs, and other followers, plus employees in any legitimate businesses they run.
* As in the examples of the Mafia and Al Qaeda, small numbers are more of an advantage than weakness in many ways as a larger organization is more easily penetrated by opposing elements and it makes things easier to be kept secret.
* A Corporation Sole is an organization of one person holding one
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Organization Index]]▼
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
▲[[Category:Organization Index]]
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